Identity - Forgiveness 6

So, how do we practically forgive someone who has deeply hurt us? Here are some Steps to Forgivingness. Applying these principles will help deliver us from bitterness and its devastation.

Step 1. Disclosure\awareness.
I find that many people don't realize they are carrying an unforgiving attitude. Thus, disclosure begins with the Psalmist prayer of 139:23-4 Search me O God...
Procedures we use with this prayer involve writing - either a negative autobiography or making a list.

The autobiography involves walking back through memories in five year segments, asking God to help recall events that caused hurt, anger and guilt. Hurt and anger from those who have hurt you. Guilt from pain that we have caused others.

Write a sentence or two about the circumstances and what your response was. Too much detail written can lead to a verbal escape. Just a "Dad wasn't there for me. That made me feel unwanted and it hurts."
"I teased a girl about being fat. I hurt her self esteem. I'm carrying guilt about that."

Think through the last five years. Write. Move back to the previous five years and on back to earliest memories. Very few people adhere to the discipline this takes. Those who do, experience great freedom as they work through the forgiving process.

Rather than a negative autobiography, some prefer making a two-column list: who hurt me or who did I hurt and what were the circumstances. This defines assignment of responsibility.
Writing has a way of clarifying and making more real what happened. This is so important in the forgiving process because just a rational, thinking approach to forgiving tends to be an exercise with shallow results. Thoughts, images, memories, and emotions need to be incorporated in forgiving if a deep healing and resolution is to take place. A strictly rational approach to forgiving will never take away the destructive power of an unforgiving spirit.

Bring a memory to recall. Identify the thoughts regarding the hurt. What image occurs? What happens as you dwell on the image? What emotions are triggered? Associate your memory with emotion. Hurt, rage, loss, grief, guilt?
Caution: dwell only long enough on the image to own the pain. If pain is dwelt on it can easily become an obsession that becomes an escape from entering active forgiving. Rather than forgiving, the focus is the pain.

Examine defenses that have protected you from that pain - revenge, stuffing, withdrawing, anesthesia cover-up, rationalizing\spiritualizing, denial, shallow forgiving. Examine how they have protected you from the pain and obstructed the forgiving process. We're talking about re-visiting the event to produce the deepest healing. (Christ set the example in his teaching. He often taught in word pictures that elicited a rational and emotional response.)

Make this an aggressive exercise in your daily formal discipline of solitude with God and spontaneously throughout the day. Integrate the memories into self concept and how it affects it and other areas of your present life. Tie the memory to mental pictures, other emotions, other memories and ongoing events and people. Ask God to reveal how bitterness effects your everyday life.

For example, one guy said, "I found himself getting outrageously angry at my new wife whenever she would give me the slightest criticism. I exploded one day with 'If it weren't for you I could be a good Christian.' I had not dealt with a burning anger toward my very dominating, critical mother. My overreactions toward my wife were mother-anger spilling out on my bride. An unforgiving spirit toward someone in the past was affecting my present relationship.

Thus, the first step in forgiving others is to allow yourself to feel your feelings fully. Whatever has happened, it is important to own your feelings. When you allow yourself the freedom to feel, your emotions will build to a peak and then dissipate again. Unfortunately, many people are afraid of the intensity of emotions and tend to block the flow. Blocking emotions in this way keeps the emotional energy trapped. Over time this creates stress because you have to work to keep all of this pent up emotional energy under control – like trying to keep a lid on a pressure cooker. Contrary to what many people believe, letting your emotions flow is the best way to let go of them and to move forward. (And the best way to let them flow is on paper. No one else gets hurt!) If you believe that your emotions may be too much for you to handle on your own, you may want to seek professional guidance as you learn to feel and process your emotions

Tomorrow's post: what if you don't feel like forgiving?